How to Share an Egg A True Story of Hunger, Love, and Plenty by Bonny Reichert

Publisher: Ballantine Books

On Sale Date:  January 21, 2025

Pages: 304

I reviewed a digital review copy from the publisher

In this moving culinary memoir, chef, and award-winning  culinary journalist Bonny Reichert describes the past of her  restaurant-owner father, who survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps and immigrated to Canada after the war ,and how his past formed her life.  For a long time, Bonny avoided everything that had to do with the holocaust, she knew her father's stories, but this changed after a travel with her family and her father to Warsaw, where he grew up in the ghetto, and where Bonny tasted the perfect bowl of borscht, and her journey to uncover her culinary roots. She takes the reader on this journey with her in many moments in her life; from her childhood, where she grew up around the restaurants of her father, about her beloved grandmother Baba Sarah who was always to be found in the kitchen, cooking the most delicious  food, from her first marriage that fell apart soon, becoming a mother, her new marriage, becoming a chef and culinary journalist, and her life changing travels to Poland, and mostly, the love for her father, who plays an important part in this book and in her life. The book takes you to many places and times in her life, and it is a very moving and beatifully written journey.

It is the story of the daughter of a holocaust survivor, and it is moving but also sad to read how the intergenerational trauma of this can span over multiple generations, altough her father never gave up, Bonny took years to gave his past a place in her life, and did this also by writing this book with her father, who had to survive the gruel horrific concentration camp with very little food, his experience with real harsh hunger and survival, you can only have deep respect for him, as he started a restaurant business out of nothing as a new immigrant in Canada after the war.

The love for food is also a red line in the book, she grew up with Polish food and over the years, learned how to make the food of her roots herself and became a chef. I truly learned a lot from this book, about historical facts and about some cultural aspects as well. I found this book very moving, entertaining, and above all, beautiful written! This is a book I recommend reading if you love books about food and history, in this book these two are perfectly combined and this is what make this book taste really good!